Would anyone like to tell me about having new bathrooms put in?

[TheOriginalWinkly]

I'm shortly moving into a house that has a hideous family bathroom and fairly hideous ensuite shower room. They'll both need fully replacing - flooring, tiles, the actual suites, the lot.

So I would love to hear about people's experiences, where they got their bits from, how much it cost etc etc :)

Don't tile the whole bathroom. Don't tile the whole bathroom. Don't tile the whole bathroom. That's my advice as a seasoned developer. If you stay in the house long enough the tiles will go out of fashion and you will have to take them all off.
Just tile where you have to. The shower cubicle, behind the wash hand basin and along the bath. If the shower is over the bath take extra care sealing around the bath.
Don't install a free standing sink with no sides, the water will go everywhere and you will never do that again. They look nice but are a nightmare.

Showers leak horribly. So I make sure the bath is absolutely unable to move and then seal with flexible sealant.
Along the tray I also put a L shape plastic strip. Make sure it is bone dry before anyone takes a shower.

If you have a separate shower, do not buy a fancy decorated door ( it will go out of fashion quickly) and use grey grout for the last four tiles at the bottom. That is where the dirt is going to collect so you might as well make it a decorative feature.
Make sure you put flooring suitable for bathrooms on the floor. NO CARPET AS IT WILL GET DISGUSTING

Medium priced sanitary ware is Roca. Stylish and not too expensive.

You will probably use a plumber so get him to buy the Toilet etc. He will have an account at a builders and plumbing merchant. Ask for a receipt and just pay him for his labour.

Unless of course you have got loads of cash. As it is really all about how much you want to spend.

Yes to Roca. We have had it in both our homes and it's great.

We have tiled our whole bathroom. It looks good.

We bought all the bits individually ourselves which made it lots cheaper. Found what we liked in expensive showrooms then sourced online.

It'll make a mess of your entire house.

holeinmyheart the bathroom is carpeted at the minute

I'll have a look at Roca thanks

Don't underestimate modern vinyl. I initially refused, but we had to do it because of floor levels etc, and actually it is warm under foot, never slippy, and I have a crazy pattern that everyone thinks is bonkers in a good way. And when we want to change, it will only cost £100. That said, ours isn't a forever house.

Totally agree re. Don't tile everywhere. Save a fortune.

Lots of bathroom places e.g., plumb world etc don't tell you the price, because you buy through your plumber. It is very irritating. I ended up buying from the one place that would tell me. (How you can choose between baths etc without knowing how much they cost does not make any sense).

And it all adds up to more than you think. I don't think you can refit a bathroom for less than £6k - but I'm sure I'll be proved wrong on the thread!

If you can, keep everything in the same places. Rerouting pipe work adds time to the project which increases costs. Having said that, if there's something which particularly annoys you about your current bathroom, change it now because you don't really want to do this again soon!

Bigger tiles make the room look larger.

Try to add storage. There's always crap in there you want to keep hidden.

This thread is about DIYing it but at lot of it is still relevant:

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/property/2484082-DIY-bathroom-lessons-learned-please

Also think about where you will store the new baths etc before they are fitted. We had to start by clearing our garage for that!

We changed our Bathroom, en-suite and downstairs loo - all at the same time!

It was a tough time but did get all the mess over and done with in one go. We got a shower bath in the bathroom and a standard cubicle in the en-suite.

We got all our stuff from Next. Employed our own fitters.

Just doing ours and looking for some funky vinyl flooring - can anyone recommend anything?

I'm just completing the last of 3 bathrooms.

Go to the plumber's merchant yourself. Ours gave us the builder's discount plus a bulk buying one.

I have fully tiled two out of the three bathrooms. We will be here for awhile and that suits me for cleaning/splashing issues as we have very small children.

Don't buy from the Internet - we had a problem with our loo and the plumber's metchant was around with another and it was replaced by 9am.